Blue Collar Entrepreneurs

Delivered September 2, 2019. Contributor: Alexis Z.

Goals

In order to inform a business pitch, craft a demographic and psychographic profile of blue collar entrepreneurs including their income and education level; what kind of service they offer; the revenue or funding of the company they started; the number of years in business; number of employees; impact of their faith in their work; plans for growth; their online and media habits; what they are researching; and what they need the most for their business. If possible, focus on blue collar entrepreneurs that have started home services businesses who are open to educating other, non-traditional entrepreneurs.

Early Findings

While most information on blue collar entrepreneurs is not specific to the home services' industry, a large portion of small, blue collar businesses or independent contractors are in the home services' industry.

Some of the highest earning industries for blue-collar entrepreneurs include home building/improvement/maintenance (construction, roofing, flooring, painting, heating and air conditioning, etc), auto-repair, landscaping, catering, event planning, and cleaning.

Most blue collar entrepreneurs do not have four year college degrees; most simply have high school degrees and/or trade certifications.

While information on the values or faith of blue collar entrepreneurs was not readily available, there was a lot of information on blue collar workers and values/faith in general. For example, it was found that blue collar workers (and thus blue collar entrepreneurs) value honesty, practicality and loyalty. They also have a very strong work ethic and moral code. However, many blue collar workers did not mention any divine "sense of calling in their work," indicating that there may be adisconnect between their faith and their professional life.

Additional key traits of successful blue collar entrepreneurs include determination and a strong belief that they can succeed.

Some extremely successful home services blue collar entrepreneurs include Mark Stoner, owner of a mullion dollar chimney sweep business; Steven Humble, who created a million dollar hidden door and passageway business; and Ron Holt, owner of multi-million dollar business Two Maids & A Mop.

Proposed next steps:

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As the initial research was only able to touch on demographic characteristics of blue collar entrepreneurs, we recommend continuing the research to identify more demographic trends such as the business owners age, gender, income, religion, and marital status.

Additionally, we recommend continuing the research to look for more psychographic trends of blue collar entrepreneurs including their motivations in starting their own business, their online and media habits; what they are researching, and what they need for their business.

Finally, we recommend additional research to identify key trends in home services businesses started by blue collar entrepreneurs to identify the general service they offer; the revenue or funding of the company; the number of years in business; number of employees; and plans for growth.